Howard Davis/Qualitative Character of Rooms
Architectural Facts in Search of a Language
Form Language Symposium - Dresden, June 2001
--Continued--
The Qualitative Character of Rooms
One of the most striking differences among the several approaches is that concerning the qualitative character of rooms and what that does to their role in the overall composition. Let us for example look at the Cairo merchant’s house, and look at it in three different ways: from the point of view of a plan analysis, from the point of view of space syntax, and from the point of view of a field of centers in Alexander’s formulation.
The room called the qa’a is on the side of the courtyard, not on its main axis, but perhaps in a position that corresponds with the alae or sometimes the triclinium in the Roman house. Indeed, there is another interesting correspondence with the Roman house, and that is that the taktaboosh, which is the porch in between the main courtyard and the garden, is very similar in position and function to the tablinum in the Roman house. This building was built about 1300 or 1400 years after the fall of Rome, so comparisons are dangerous. But if we look at this plan, it is as if the symmetrical plan of the Roman house was relaxed, the direct axis in from the street disappeared, the shops on the street went away, and that was the nature of the transformation. And of course that accords with what we know of the social forces which helped to shape the Islamic city.
But getting back to the qa’a. The adjacency graph of the house does not say much. It is one room among many and its adjacencies are similar to those involving less important rooms. If we look at a plan analysis of the house, where we look at the relative size and symmetries of rooms, the qa’a begins to assume more importance, since it is one of the more symmetrical large rooms of the house and adjacent to the courtyard.
This importance is reinforced when the plan is extended to a section or perspective, since the qa’a is a three-story high space.
But there is something that even the plan or the axonometric diagram does not emphasize about this space, and that is the fact that it has received the most investment in terms of materials, ornament, local symmetries, and a major lantern in its roof which brings in light. It has a very high level of architectural intensity, in my experience of the building rivalling even that of the courtyard itself.
This may be represented by a different sort of diagram, which is a simple diagram that illustrates the distribution of centers and their intensity. With present day computer techniques I’m not sure if this diagram could be analyzed as easily as the adjacency graph. But it does immediately call your attention to the qa’a, and immediately indicates the intensity of ornament and architectural elaboration that may be present there.
Compare this with the estancia in the Mexican house. The estancia is similar in that its importance in the life of the house is only hinted at by the plan or by the fact that it is the only room with two doors toward the courtyard, and the only room which has niches built into the walls. It may have a higher ceiling and more architectural elaboration, and it will almost certainly be felt as the most important center of the house, of equivalent importance to the courtyard itself. And this status would show on a mapping of the centers of the house.
Before I go on to the conclusion I would like to show these drawings and corresponding analytical diagrams from Rob Krier’s book on architectural composition. The diagrams are intended to illustrate principal spatial characteristics of these buildings, by giving emphasis to their major spaces and spatial sequences. At least that is how they are described in the text that accompanies the illustrations. The text does not make any mention of any differentiations within the spaces themselves, no mention that in particular situations, for example, a wall or a column may have an increased intensity or sense of focus. But in fact the way the diagrams are drawn is suggestive of something which is not mentioned in the text, and that is that within particular spaces, there may be an emphasis on material or ornament or the surfaces themselves. In other words, these diagrams are suggestive of the diagram I drew for the qa’a, illustrating how the formulation of Alexander’s centers may help to interpret, in an abstract way, aspects of buildings that may not be immediately extracted from the orthographic drawings.
Conclusion and Applicability to Contemporary Work
Within each of the methods of analysis it is possible to compare one building to another, within particular types.
Certainly the plan analysis itself does this, and individual examples are often described as variations on an archetype. This is commonly done in studies of architecture and vernacular architecture.
Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson have shown, very rigorously, that a space syntax analysis of buildings within a particular culture yields correlations among their adjacency graphs. So there is, in a sense, a typical adjacency graph for certain kinds of buildings within particular cultures.
In her work on the Roman house, Carol Watts has shown, equally rigorously, that there is a recurrent set of patterns that is characteristic not only of the domus but of the insula as well, showing the persistence of patterns within a particular culture over different conditions of density and formal typology.
Such a study has not yet been done for Alexander’s formulation of centers and fields of centers. But the idea that there might be culturally-specific features in distributions of centers was hinted at in a dissertation done by Artemis Anninou. In teaching about vernacular architecture, I sometimes refer to particular building types in particular cultures as culturally specific and culturally shared fields of centers.
I am describing all this to make the point that all each of these ways of looking at architecture has its own rigor that stands up well to detailed analysis. In this paper, I have rather less rigorously shown that that on the one hand, these approaches are consistent with each other, and on the other, they bring to light different but equally important aspects of buildings.
So just to summarize:
The well-known typological and plan diagram approach helps us to understand the features of buildings that are related to formal archetypes, and which are sometimes connected to the global meaning and symbolism of buildings.
The space syntax approach helps us to accurately understand the detailed topology of configurations, which is often connected to how buildings and cities reinforce their meaning through power relationships, social distribution and human movement.
The pattern language approach helps us to see the relationship between formal relationships in buildings and human use and function.
And the approach of centers helps us to understand the actual spatial presence and intensity of rooms, groups of rooms and other entities in the building.
I have tried to argue, first, that each of these approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses; second that they are nevertheless compatible with each other; and third, our understanding of buildings is increased greatly if we use all of them together. The title of this paper, "Architectural facts in search of a language," refers to the fact that there is not a common language of representation that includes them all.
Such a common language might be helpful in contemporary work, and particularly to the development of complex configurations such as urban design schemes, housing, and large civic and institutional buildings. Such projects need to have architectural beauty and coherence, but they also need to respond very specifically to issues of human movement, function and feeling which are often extremely difficult to understand when looking at designs done only with typical representational techniques.
Let me just show, without analyzing them, two buildings which were published about five years ago. This is an old persons’ home in Finland; the other, which I will show in a minute, is a center for handicapped children in France. Both of these buildings are highly complex, and as buildings for communities of people that are vulnerable in different ways, they need to balance personal architectural expression on the part of the architect with a high level of understanding of how the building helps or hinders human encounters of different kinds, helps or hinders the reinforcement of self-identity and self-worth that vulnerable people need to feel, helps or hinders the healing that a well-designed room might contribute to.
The old person’s home is described in an article about it as fulfilling a need to have "a clear, economical and reassuring overall pattern, and at the same time a gentle gradation of privacy from the public route, through the semi-private space, to the privacy of the individual space." And indeed, we might believe from the plan that this intention has been met.
The children’s center is described as having "a key area [which is] the main hall or common room, which is open to everyone and where local people, notably the elderly and adolescents, are encouraged to drop in. Conceived as a place of stimulating contact and exchange between handicapped children, parents, friends, visiting school children and the local community, it is designed on an open plan with an island fireplace, and contains such attractions as a multi-screen TV wall, a small lending library, an aquarium and a musical chequer-board floor." And again, we see in the plan and photograph a space that might have the life that is described.
These are both expensive buildings with ambitious social agendas. There is no doubt that with these buildings, there was a close relationship between architects and clients, and that presumably the client group felt that they were in a position to criticize the design based on their best knowledge of their own specialties of social service or medicine. But what we have seen in this talk is that not everything that needs to be known about buildings can be learned from a simple reading of the ordinary design drawings – and so that even an enlightened architect and client, working together with the best of intentions, are not necessarily in the best position to predict success.
And although it seems as if the human and social needs expressed in these buildings may only be important for vulnerable groups or groups that need to be controlled in different ways, like children or victims of Alzheimer’s disease, I would argue that in fact vulnerable groups are like the canary in the coal mine for all of us. The failure of much public housing and urban design often comes about because of a failure to make accurate predictions about such matters as the relationships between public and private space, or pedestrian densities, or the use of open space. Over the last 10 or 15 years, these failures have resulted in a renewed attention to the social aspects of design of complex configurations like neighborhoods and housing schemes.
I would suggest that for such projects, all four of these techniques be used for analysis during the design phase. They emphasize different but essential issues in buildings and building groups, and they offer the promise of representational systems that can allow for good communication, and for success and failure to be understood and shared. The use of contemporary digital techniques means that this should not be as outlandish as it sounds. Systematic analytical methods, along with traditional architectural judgment, would reinforce each other.
In conclusion, what I have been talking about is the possibility of architectural description that is more complete than typical methods of representation, and which has the capability of easily being shared among architects, clients and the general public. Such descriptions might go a long way toward breaking down the intellectual barriers that now exist in architectural culture -- at least in some parts of the world -- and might therefore help the architecture profession regain the legitimacy that it has sought for a long time.
